OREBs are gradually declining as more teams abandon the boards for better transition defense (probably).

Layups get OREB'd slightly more than 40% of the time, with jumpers and threes OREB'd slightly more than 30% of the time. Threes are least likely to get OREB'd, so don't let those long bouncers back out fool you.

Anything that gets blocked and stays in play is about 32% to be OREB'd.

Chart

Offensive rebounds are more likely as the game goes on, which is a pretty weird finding to me but there it is. The late surge makes sense since trailing teams will go all out and damn the transition torpedoes, but the rest of it is a bit weird.

And yet it moves. A palpable cut for one Jalen Coleman. This is not a drill (nor is it, like, something that is new, but I was waiting for more basketball recruiting news that did not appear):

Coleman, a 6-foot-3 guard from La Lumiere High School in La Porte, Ind., will choose between Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Notre Dame, UNLV and NC State, according to Scout.com recruiting analyst Brian Snow.

Notre Dame, oddly, is rumored to be Michigan's main competition. They do have proximity and (probable) playing time, but they haven't exactly been Beilein-standard during the interminable Mike Brey era.

Is John Beilein the best at turning lowly recruits into lottery picks?

Trey Burke and Nik Stauskas both shot into the lottery after being in the 70s or 80s as recruits… just wait until next year, when Caris LeVert probably adds his name in there somewhere. Parrish's trump card:

Of the 20 players selected in the top 10 of the past two NBA Drafts, 18 were former top 75 prospects and/or players who spent at least three seasons in college. The only exceptions? Burke and Stauskas -- both of whom enrolled at Michigan as unheralded recruits, earned Big Ten Player of the Year honors as sophomores, turned pro and were selected in the top 10 of the subsequent NBA Draft.

Bonkers, man. This is such a smart quote in re: how:

"We try to project whether a player is on the rise or if he's already where he's gonna be," Beilein said. "A lot of the [analysts'] early projections on players, I think, are made because the players' bodies are ahead of everybody else's bodies. And if you saw Nik or Caris, back when they were 16 years old, their bodies weren't ahead of anybody else's bodies."

Not that projecting based on bodies is necessarily a bad strategy—it seems to be working just fine for, uh, everybody. But when you're trying to assemble a starting five that's ten picks away from being all first-rounders and you don't have the recent pedigree of the Dukes and the Kentuckies, it is (obviously) a rather good idea.

Okay okay one more quote:

"Lots of coaches work on shooting with players, but Beilein teaches guys how to shoot," an NBA executive told me. "He doesn't just work with them. He actually teaches them."

The Michigan recruit has an aggressive, athletic upside that could come on very strong in his draft year. Wins battles in the tough areas of the ice and can provide puck support. We like Werenski’s total skillset more right now, but Boka could easily emerge as the best American talent on the blue line in this draft behind Hanifin.

The top nine guys are all headed to Michigan, BC, or BU, FWIW.

This is appalling. National Football Post puts up a thing about NFL talent with a boggling Michigan thing. This is the second half of the chart running down the top 37 producers of NFL talent in the league, as ordered by 2013 player starts. Michigan's cliff is insane:

Argh Harbaugh

Nutshell, meet Michigan's barely over .500 record since Bo's death. It's not quite that bad in real life, as a combination of circumstances reduced Michigan's number to the "Stanford before 2009" number you see above. Actually, it's just one circumstance: Stevie Brown getting knocked out with an injury.

Your top overall pre-2009 producers:

Miami (That Miami)

Michigan

Tennessee

Texas

Florida State

Michigan is dead last since, amongst this sample. NOW ARE YOU HAPPY TO TALK ABOUT FOOTBALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL /rock musik

That… is beautiful, and then you realize that the onion ring there is bacon-wrapped.

Let's not do this. Michigan went over its travel budget for the bowl game by just over 100k, causing assertions that Michigan took a loss on the thing. That is not accurate, as even the article states:

addition of the playoff, I really think other bowl games are really going to start struggling, in terms of attendance, rating, and like, players actually trying. Last year, the second tier bowl games (non BCS, non-Cotton) were not very watchable, the stadiums are becomming less and less populated, and the players, aside from grabbing their goodie bags, appear to have completely checked out. Even the New Years Day florida bowls were really bad last year. What does it mean to win the Outback Bowl or the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl? Absolutely nothing more than what it means to lose it, or to have not been in it at all. That is a problem.

That chart is sobering, though I suspect we'll see an uptick this year with both tackles likely getting some playing time, and guys like Denard and Brown likely seeing more NFL time. But yeah, the team hasn't been producing NFL players up to the previous standards, and it is showing. That said, the 2009 inflection point chosen is probably the worst one you could have for this program, given what happened around that time.

only served to remind me of the sad state of Michigan football. Fortunately we schedule enough patsies to register winning seasons. But watching KS punish us in the last bowl game left me depressed and embarrassed.

about this very wealthy guy volunteering to coach his daughter's basketball team even though he didn't know a thing about basketball. So he studied it. And taught his undersized girls that they clearly weren't going to win with dunks, so they'd have to do it by running around, waving their hands and constantly getting in the other team's way. The team ended up undefeated.

featuring Vivek Ranadivé was part of an Anderson Cooper feature on Malcolm Gladwell ("The Power of the Underdog"), so includes video of the team he coached and worth a view. Something weird happened with embedding attempt, but here's the LINK to webpage which includes both video and transcription (pertinent part below).

His lack of knowledge about basketball, wasn’t his only obstacle. His daughter’s team had absolutely no talent.

Anderson Cooper: The girls on your basketball team—they weren't tall

Vivek Ranadivé: No.

Anderson Cooper: Could they dribble?

Vivek Ranadivé: A couple of them.

Anderson Cooper: Could they shoot?

Vivek Ranadivé: Not very well.

Anderson Cooper: Did they have a long experience playing basketball?

Vivek Ranadivé: For the most part, no.

So Randivé relied on his mathematics talent and devised a computer algorithm that turned out to be a winning formula for his girls. The strategy: force the other team to turn over the ball.

[Yes, he has a couple engineering degrees as well as his MBA. And you NBA fans probably know that he bought the Warriors before the Kings.]

Are a lot about putting in the effort and concentration, both of which are affected by physical and mental fatigue. Contrasting, offensive rebounding is much less about focus and technique, and more about luck (bounce of the ball which also become more varied as shooters get fatigued, rebounding position, etc).

Because the norm is for the defense to rebound the ball, if the offensive player relaxes, not much changes if the defender gives max effort. But, if the defensive player relaxes, it can drastically change if the offensive player gives effort. On top of that, the defensive rebounder is more affected by fatigue (and working hard on the offensive end is much easier to give effort than on the defensive end for most basketball players as well).

One of the more recent 2015 mock drafts I saw had nine 1st round picks playing in college next year, three each for Michigan, BU and BC as Nick Boka seems to be steadily climbing up the ladder. Early on he was seen as a 2nd-4th round guy, now I'm seeing him show up in that 1st round territory.

Similarly, Brendan Warren is consistently in the 2-3 round range. Could very well be the best recruiting class (in terms of NHL draft status) that Michigan has ever had.

Of the 20 players selected in the top 10 of the past two NBA Drafts, 18 were former top 75 prospects and/or players who spent at least three seasons in college. The only exceptions? Burke and Stauskas -- both of whom enrolled at Michigan as unheralded recruits, earned Big Ten Player of the Year honors as sophomores, turned pro and were selected in the top 10 of the subsequent NBA Draft.

Not that I don't want to believe, but looking at two years with relatively small pools, doesn't that really set off your fluke filter, Brian?

Well, what I learned from the "null hypothesis" link Brian included in the etc. is that if you KNOW something strongly enough, it doesn't matter if it's statistically significant. So the small sample size here doesn't matter.

Michigan lost money on the Wild Wings Bowl, despite what Brian argues. "Losing money" means that you have less at the end than you would have not done the thing. Had Michigan not gone to that bowl, it would have saved $2.01 million in expenses, and saved the Big Ten another $322,000 or so in unsold ticket losses. Assuming no other Big Ten teams goes in Michigan's place, what Michigan gives up is the $1,850,000 travel allowance, and its roughly $111,000 share of the Big Ten bowl distributions for that game ($3.5 million minus $1.85M to Michigan minus $322,000 for unsold tickets, then divided by 12).

It was a small loss, just as Brandon pointed out; something like $21,000. But it was a loss.

What the hell Brian? Were you not aware that the World Cup is in its finals? I come to this damn site and its all football all year, give me a brake. I mean earlier I was watching Germany dismantle Brazil 5-0 and once again its football. Fine then, I am going to my favorite site Mgosoccer and check that out.... S/ not sure why iI feel I need to put out the sarcasm sign.